


Pressure Bandage

by themegalosaurus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Blood, Gen, Hurt Sam, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Mention of SamJess, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 21:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8506588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: Sam’s hands are shaking a little, but you don’t need steady hands to wrap gauze around a leg, and he doesn’t have time for stitches anyway. Of course it would be Wednesday night that the chupacabra showed up on campus; Thursday morning is his only 9 AM lecture and he’s already missed two sessions of that class this term.
A story for the Nov 2nd OhSam commentfic meme, based on the prompt: a lecture hall at Stanford // a professor or classmates // passing out.





	

Sam’s hands are shaking a little, but you don’t need steady hands to wrap gauze around a leg, and he doesn’t have time for stitches anyway. Of course it would be Wednesday night that the chupacabra showed up on campus; Thursday morning is his only 9 AM lecture and he’s already missed two sessions of that class this term. Those weren’t monsters. They were Brady’s fault. But Sam couldn’t explain, didn’t want to cause more problems than Brady’s already causing himself, and the professor had been pissed enough by his vague excuses to put him on a warning. One more absence and Sam risks failing the class, which means maybe losing his scholarship. If he loses his scholarship, everything falls apart. He’s already working two part-time jobs, constantly frustrated by the sleep deprivation that he’s fighting every night while he writes, every morning as he drags himself to class. It’s like he’s swimming in mud, watching everybody else with their money and their leisure time breezing along. He doesn’t. He’s lucky to be here at all. But he’s constantly shaky, more caffeine than blood, and he’s sure that the weeks upon weeks of just holding it together are to blame for the fact that the chup’ got the drop on him before it fell. 

He killed it, in the end, drove a thick stake of oak through its heart and buried its rough-scratchy body in the arboretum. But he’s bleeding, still, from the great deep gash that its claws dug into his thigh. He tries not to think about it, focuses on binding his leg tight as he can, focuses on _hurrying_. He checks the clock. Shit. 8.30 and he has to cross campus. He pulls on a fresh pair of jeans, looks helpless at the pile of blood-soaked towels on his bedroom floor. He can deal with it later. He just has to get going. 

When he stands, the wave of pain from the wound in his thigh washes dizzy up to his head and he almost falls over, catches himself before he can crumple back onto the bed. _Fuck_. He closes his eyes, breathes in, and bends over awkward and stiff-legged to grab his backpack from its place on his desk. He slides a stack of notebooks into his arms at random, grits his teeth and limps out of the door. 

The stairs down to ground level nearly undo him, but the elevator is always broken and Sam doesn’t have time to wait. Out in the chill of the February morning, he hunches his shoulders and shuffles grimly on, distracted from the cold wind through his too-thin jacket by the furnace-hot agony throbbing in his thigh. He’s worried about putting weight on it, worried about it bleeding, so he lurches forward inefficiently, dragging the useless leg. The thought of how he must look, stupid gangly hobbling scarecrow, ties a tight knot of anxiety at the back of his brain; but the bulk of it, the forefront, is just _hurry hurry hurry_ and so he does, presses on until at last the tiled roof of the humanities building comes into view. He checks his watch through blurry eyes. 8.57. Okay. 

On the door of the usual lecture room is a note saying that they’ve moved upstairs. The spiral binding on Sam’s notebook is digging into his fingers, the corner of it cutting tight into his arm. He grips on tighter as he hoists himself up the staircase, resigning himself to putting weight on the leg, trying not to think about the creaky give of the gauze. Close, close, close. His heart is hammering in his throat, skip-skipping like it does sometimes after the nights when he loses count of the coffee shots, when his whole body starts missing the beat. 

It’s 9.01 when Sam pushes open the door to the lecture theatre; Prof Childs is there, but she’s still shuffling her papers at the lectern at the front of the room. He feels relief so acute it’s like his whole body unclenches. Okay. Okay. He can do this after all. 

He’s scanning the room for an empty seat when he steps forward awkwardly, twists his ankle and the tear on his thigh tugs open and he gasps in pain. For a moment he thinks he can hold it together, but the red hum he’s been suppressing grows louder, grows deafening. The blood roars in his ears, nausea building at the back of his throat. Sam holds himself for a second, fighting it, swaying on the spot; an iron band of agony tightening around his leg. Black spots dance over his vision. Then all in a moment, he feels himself break. His gorge rises, his stomach cramps and he folds over forward, his notebooks clattering on the floor, the room greying into merciful oblivion as his limbs give way. Before he closes his eyes, he sees some girl he half-recognises (Kelly? Keira?), mouth open and eyes wide, her face a distorted, terrified mask. 

When he comes round he’s still lying on the floor, though somebody’s arranged him in the recovery position. The lecture theatre is emptying. The stragglers stare at him over their shoulders as they hurry past. “Sam,” says a voice, disembodied and distant; and Stephen, his study buddy on this politics course, looms over him from nowhere, blinking anxious and scared. 

Sam’s mouth tastes of vomit and the air smells of blood. He scrabbles for a hand-hold, tries to sit up, but the wooden floor is slippery and the jolt to his leg sets off a pain so sharp that he’s grateful to fall back again. 

There’s the hollow sound of a pair of high heels and Professor Childs looks over him, crouches down to get close. “There’s an ambulance on its way,” she says. 

“No,” says Sam, and he lifts a hand to scrub at his face, try to get himself together. His fingers are trembling violently, setting off a shiver that racks through his whole body. “I’m okay,” he says. 

“You’re bleeding all over the floor,” says Stephen tightly. 

“Sorry,” Sam says. He looks up at Professor Childs, upside-down behind his head. “I was… I didn’t want to be late for class.” 

She frowns. “I dread to think,” she says, “what happened to keep you away from my previous classes, Sam.” 

He’s not sure if she’s joking. Even stringing her words together for sense is proving difficult. All the elements of what Sam’s seeing have started to jumble together oddly, Stephen’s face shifting and rearranging like a puzzle. Like a Picasso. Oh shit. Jess is going to kill him if she finds out about this. 

“… happened, Sam?” Stephen is saying. 

“A dog,” Sam says. It’s not plausible, not really; won’t hold together once they get him to hospital and cut open his jeans. But if he’s adamant enough about it, what else are they gonna say? Mountain lion? Bear? Neither is likely, downtown. 

“The fuck did you do to it?” Stephen says; and then, absurdly, “You love dogs!” 

Sam laughs, although the sound tails off into a wheeze as the movement begins to hurt. Then the clash of the double doors of the hall, and voices, the rattly wheels of a gurney. 

“Okay,” says a voice, and there are hands underneath him, the room lurching as he’s lifted and set down. 

“I’ll go with him,” says Stephen. Sam wants to say, don’t worry, but actually the thought of somebody familiar at his side is unbearably tempting. 

The medics roll him along to the elevator. While they are waiting, there’s a hand on Sam’s arm, and he opens his eyes to find meet the professor’s serious gaze. “Send me an email when you’re better, Sam,” she says. “We’ll work something out.” She shakes her head. “There’s no point killing yourself over this class.” 

Sam closes his eyes, tries to regulate his breathing, but the stifling panic that her words have triggered stacks up heavy, bears down on his chest. He thinks about the deadlines, about his precariously balanced routine; thinks about missed shifts, missed essays, missed hours of class. He’d thought, coming here, that he was coming to something settled. In actuality it’s not so different to life with Dad. Everything still feels tenuous. It’s all hanging by a thread. 

An image of the chupacabra swims into his mind, its hairless body crumpled in its fresh-dirt grave. Sam thinks about the weight of the earth, packed damp and solid around it; thinks about the soil clogging its airways, its nose and throat. He feels like that sometimes, like he’s struggling to breathe through something thicker than air. 

“It’s okay,” says Stephen, and he’s walking beside Sam as the trolley rattles its way out of the door. His fingers, dry and warm, find Sam’s; and he squeezes Sam’s hand reassuringly. 

“Yeah,” says Sam. He’s still calculating, the overstuffed hours hanging oppressively over his head. He’ll just have to. He can take his laptop to work, next week, can swap his afternoons for night shifts which are usually quieter and try to make up the classwork he’s gonna miss the next couple of days. And if he puts off seeing Jess next week as well, that gives him an extra evening as well as time for his leg to heal. He doesn’t want to miss seeing her, has cancelled on her too many times, but in making the plan he feels a space start to clear in his mind. It’s an air pocket. He can do it. He can breathe. Head above the water. “It’s okay,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always interested in Stanford Sam but this is not a very comforting hurt/comfort, so I'm sorry for that! Hopefully this still pleases my fellow hurt!Sam fetishists. And... readers' comments always make my day :-)


End file.
